“The God of Mercy sitteth on His throne.”

-Ta. Ha.

He walked wooden-legged through the door of his Garden of Hope, where the children studied on the ground floor. Of the 20 or so children only five were girls, and they were seated to the left front, furthest from the stairs to the gym above. He had scarcely noticed them in the past, but they were unmistakable now, in their clean white blouses, natural hair, and long skirts—eyes bugged out to eternity and mouths dropped wide enough to catch every fly behind the Lexington Market!

To his right he saw the oldest boys, including the one who fancied him as Black Spiderman, rising from their chairs, only to sit back down in response to a hissing command that he did not quite make out—and she descended upon him like night on a not-yet-drunken devil.

Mycala, plainly pretty, unadorned, beautiful-eyed—and oh so young to be looking at him so—came toward him like a stalking cat for a skulking rat, with pain, indictment, anger and disappointment all washing over her hazelnut complexion.

He stopped and stood, ashamed at his appearance.

Then the great cat pounced, not with her lithe body, but with her God-bestowed tongue for lashing. Her soft hand balled into a fist and came to rest on one outward swept hip, as her head moved slightly from side to side, and the other hand formed into a pointer of faults, thrust at his chest like a fire poker in hell. Her voice was one of sizzling rebuke, “Well, look what the cat dragged in!”

The girls up front, nearest her, giggled.

The mouths of all the boys made zeros of surprise, except for the comic book reading fool in the back who blurted, “Oh no she didn’t.”

As Mycala’s normally innocent eyes darted wrathfully to that corner of the classroom the fool boy then said in his defense, “Well Miss Mycala, he done fought the White Devil hisself to a draw and laid low them nasty winos—”

Akbar Qama raised his open hand, which was chalky with dust, swollen and cracked, and intoned, in a voice so deep he thought it had finally broken, “Mind Miss Mycala.”

He then looked to all the boys, one by one, cowing them into silence, even though they all seemed to have questions on their tongues. He then turned toward Mycala, bowed his head, and looked back down into her eyes, “I apologize for appearing so in your class.”

He then walked toward the stair as evenly as he might, which was no small feat as it felt like a dozen devils were dancing on his every part. The stairs all seemed to creak on this ascent, heavy and evenly laid in though they were. Finally, he reached the top of the stairs as a murmur sounded below.

Upon the top stair, he turned and looked down behind him to see the feral dyke girl mounting the bottom stair, a towel over her shoulder, wearing training sweats, and carrying a bucket complete with water bottle, and Vaseline. He nodded to her and pushed through, to the sound of Gans working the speed bag, to see the others—which Usef actually had patience to speak with—huddled about before the ring.

The look on Usef’s face was worth it all—what a cream-filled éclair he was, after all!

This imbued him with his old arrogance and he strode across the gym floor flashing a grin, as Usef carped, himmed, hawed—to the sound of Gans playing Spaghetti western music on the speed bag, dancing like a fiend at judgment day under the platform, his wide innocent grin marking his elation at his coach’s return.

Jbar, Bessan and Dook were separating, leaving Usef to stand alone before him, as he forgot himself and began to rave in his soft way, “Brother Akbar, where have you been? You beat that Government Devil half to death, endangering our stipend, leaving these young warriors without a guide, and look at you—you look like Jimmy Hendrix back from the dead—more like Bob Marley as a drywall sander! Look at your—”

He looked Usef in the eyes, with the look, the look that froze such as he in their tracks and their thoughts. At the same time he spoke to his young warriors, who now looked wide-eyed at the gym door as it swung shut.

“Jbar, that woman behind me would by Miss Jones, and you will teach her the corner work. My friendly White Devil will be returning tonight as sure as night falls, and he’ll need plenty of water between chasing Gans around the ring.”

The speed bag stopped as Dook snickered.

“Dook, the White Devil will have lesser fiends in tow. Take them through the line drills. They are unlikely to be worth squat with gloves on. Bessan, you will be working the mitts for the sissy ones. I will be coaching the bag work for the real white boys.”

Usef put his arm—almost—around, him, then recoiling from contact with his filthy form and the damage it would do his cream colored suit, he whispered, “How do you know they are coming back tonight? I’ve been on the phone with Mister Noble every day and he indicated that he had no dealings with you—and old Miso over on Broadway came to me with his dentist’s bill! Are you trying to get me shutdown, Negro! Slapping around a litigious Asian, jacking up winos in the alley and ripping off their junk within a stone’s throw of here?”

Akbar, in a fit of mischief that would have done Gans proud, embraced soft little Usef in a smothering hug of faɡɡot NFL proportions that showered him with dust, rat shit, brick fragments, and dried-up crusty bits of what have you. “Brother Usef, I know a White Devil when I lace up with him, and that fellow will be back on the fourth day—this is the fourth day, is it not? The fourth day is the quitter’s portion of shame. He shall not drink from that bitter cup. He will come. Prepare to roll out your shameless zebra carpet for the devils’ dance.”

Usef was cringing in horror as Akbar let him go, half afraid to brush off whatever had fouled his $2,000 suit for fear of soiling his manicured hands beyond redemption. Akbar walked by him toward the spiral stair to the refuge above, in need of a shower and a change of clothes, to the sound of Jbar introducing Jones to the gauze cabinet to the rhythm of Gans skipping rope and rapping to himself,

“Devil bring yo fryin’ pan,

Cause Gans be cookin’ wit butta—

Catch him if you can!”

As soon as he vomited in the commode and scrubbed his destitution clean away under the icy water, he would be fit to coach. He felt though, deep down in his belly and his bones, that his sparring days were over.

As he passed through the black lacquered oak door and entered the sanctuary, he mumbled to himself, “That devil snatched your soul and don’t know it.”

It nagged him that to answer would be a sign of creeping dementia, yet he answered himself anyhow.

“Then be a devil-deceiving ghost and pretend you’re every bit the man you were before you laced up with him on the last night of your previous life.”

He soon stood in front of the mirror in the purification chamber, and had to agree with Usef to an extent.

“Jimmy Hendrix as a coalminer dragged from a cave-in more like.”